Yesterday might of been the hottest day I’ve ridden in ever. I’m not sure, but it seemed pretty hot. Okay, really hot. The funny thing is that you’d think it would be cooler coasting downhill, but it actually was hotter. Opposite of wind chill I guess. I think that anytime you get over 98.6 degrees, body temperature, that will be the case. I know evaporation and humidity has a bunch to do with this, but it was definitely the case yesterday. (Feel free to correct me here if I’m wrong.) When I spent a winter in Grand Forks North Dakota, I rode my bike at -25 below, so yesterday riding at 109 makes it a 134 degree temperature span. That is enough for me, I don’t need to try to break that anytime soon.

Anyway, we had a 21.1 mph average for a little over a hour and a half. That was pretty quick. I didn’t feel too bad. I actually never felt hot, but like I’ve stated here before, I don’t seem to have an ability to judge how hot it is when it get extremely hot. I just feel the effects of it when it’s too late to correct the downward spiral.

Today is forecast to be just 107. But, yesterday was forecast to be 103 and it was 109, so it could be pretty ugly again. I was replacing a brake caliper on my car, late morning, and had to stop when I couldn’t pick up the tools anymore because they were too hot and my hands were so slick, from sweat, that I was having a hard time keeping hold of them.

I always race in long finger gloves. I haven’t been wearing gloves at all training recently. That has changed. I hurt my right wrist/hand crashing at the Jingle Cross last November, and ever since then, my right hand goes numb. Actually, it is only my thumb, index finger and middle finger that go numb. If I shake my hand, the feeling comes back pretty quickly. Anyway, not wearing gloves when my hands are so sweaty, makes me grip the bars much tighter, making my hands go numb much more consistently. So, I’m back to gloves in training again.

Back to yesterday, it amazed me that I heard the never ending noise of roofing nailers firing all afternoon. I don’t understand how these transient roofers can work throughout the day in these temperatures. They must be hating life. An unlimited amount of work and it has been record temperatures for the past three weeks. It has to really slow down their productivity. But, that being said, those guys are much harder than I could ever hope to be.

I got a Nike Ice Vest in the mail a couple days ago. Thanks Ben. I tried it for a little bit today, but don’t think I have it down. It is a small/medium, so it is pretty tight on me. I froze it overnight, but the stomach area had been cut out and the baffles leak, so it might take some jerry-rigging to make it work efficiently.

Okay, deciding about racing this weekend. I need to race for sure. I’m probably not going up to Elk Grove. There is another race near St. Louis with good prize $$$. There is also a couple races in Denver that Brian wants to go do. The first, a hill climb up Lookout Mountain and the 2nd, a Criterium somehow affiliated with the PRO Challenge. I’m planning on eventually going West, so maybe it’s not such a bad time to head that way.

Update – the high is now forecast to be 110 degrees. That is way into triple digits.

The Nike Ice Vest from the back. It is just baffles that you fill with water and freeze.

Trudi sent this from downtown Lawrence at 3 pm this afternoon. It's now 111 here.

At 5:05 pm.

This only makes me feel like I’m being a pussy here. I especially like the high on Thursday. I don’t know how you do it Matt Ankeny.

The sport has changed a lot in the last 10 years. In lots of ways. One way it has changed, that I find not so appealing from a riders standpoint, is the intimidation aspect.

I thought of this because of a story Trudi told me that Michael Schär expressed. He was saying that it was so weird that during the Tour de France, that guys that were “his friends” would scream and intimidate him when he was trying to get to the front to keep Cadel out of the wind. He thought it was so strange that these same guys would be doing nothing the rest of the season and were so amped during the Tour.

But, that is the way the sport has “evolved”. I think it started here in the US when all the track riders from Australia and New Zealand started coming here. That is their way racing down there. And they brought it our way. At least that is when I first started noticing the problem.

There is a certain hierarchy in the peleton. But that hierarchy needs to be earned. Just because someone is wearing a certain jersey doesn’t give them the right to try to establish their will upon others.

I used to get a ton of shit from Gordon McCauley. Mainly when riding criteriums. It seemed that we were always fighting for the same sweet spot behind the leadout train at the end of the race. He’d yell abunch, but I wouldn’t back down. I could tell he was having a hard time keeping his position, mainly because he was scared.

Then one year, in Anniston, Alabama, it all changed. We were racing the criterium there and it was obvious that it was going to rain. It was at night and I’d let a ton of air out of my tires. The officials said that if it got bad, they were going to instantly go to 5 to go. So, when it started raining hard and everyone started falling down, I took off. And I rode alone. Forever. After about 5 laps, they switched the laps counter to 10 to go. I ended up getting caught with about 200 meters to go by a small group and ended up 4th I think. Gordon had quit the race and was watching. Afterward he came up and said something like, “I’ve never seen someone go so fast through corners in the rain, at night. I guess I don’t have anything to worry about for now on.” It was a pretty nice thing to say. I never heard a peep from him since.

Anyway, the yelling thing seems to be a way that a rider tries to establish his dominance of others without having to put out any physical effort. I can’t believe how many time I hear pro guys yelling. It is never the other way around. I happened to do a bunch of criterium in the rain this spring and it was crazy. The same guys that would be screaming about the moves others were making were making the very same moves, much worse, sometimes falling. And it is virtually aways a “professional” rider doing this. But, as we all no, the jersey doesn’t make the rider.

So, when the stakes are high, such as during the Tour, the intimidation becomes extreme. Obviously it came to a head this year with so many crashes on the flat stages when no one seemed to be backing down. Trying to ride in “team formation” in the middle of the peleton is a recipe for disaster, as we all saw. And trying to physically intimidate other riders from “stealing your wheel” doesn’t usually work out that great either.

There are times to use intimidation to try to gain an advantage. But with 30 miles to go in a 120 mile stage of a 22 day stage race, isn’t one of them. I wish the team directors would realize this and quit putting so much pressure on their riders to try to race the middle of the race like it was the end of the race. It is just stupid. Let’s try to use the tactic more sparingly.